Apple announces octo-core Mac Pro

Last month's AppleStore cock-up comes true

Apple has upgraded is Mac Pro desktop with a pair of 3GHz quad-core Intel Xeon processors, less than a month after a website cock-up revealed such a machine was in the offering.

It doesn't come cheap. The basic Mac Pro costs $2,200. Replace the two dual-core 2GHz CPUs with the two quad-core chips and the price almost doubles to $3,997. Buy 16GB of memory and the price rises by a further $4,499. Phew.

The appearance came a week after Intel introduced low-power quad-core Xeons. Apple doesn't say precisely which Xeons its quad-core box contains - all it says is that they're 5300-series parts. Our money's on the as-yet-unlisted X5365 - a part that is expected to cost well over $1,100, which Apple's pricing would appear to confirm.